This beast popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed the other day and of course I had to blog on it. Not sure what more I can say about a vehicle type I've blogged to death over the years but here goes. This is a 1971 Oldsmobile F85 "Town Sedan" and it's for sale near my home here in bucolic Cleveland, Ohio with a, I kid you not, asking price of $4,000.
I'm not quite sure who or what the target market would be for a fifty-year old Oldsmobile four-door sedan that's not even a Cutlass. Yes, it's technically part of the Cutlass series but by 1971, what had been the model designation for Oldsmobile's "senior compacts" had been pushed to the bottom of the Oldsmobile pricing ladder and denoted their least-expensive mid-size model. However, as an old friend in the used car business used to say, "there's an ass for every seat". Perhaps the low-mileage and it being a "CALIFORNIA CAR" would be a selling point to someone up here. Although, four-grand for a car in Northeast Ohio would buy you a fairly nice, somewhat "old" but not fifty-years old, low-mileage driver. Who knows. Maybe a movie company would scarf this up as a set up piece.
Of all of GM's wonderful 1968-1972 intermediates, the Oldsmobile's are my least favorite. Save for a two-door 1970-1972 Cutlass Supreme, so perhaps that fact drives my ambivalence towards this sorry old boat. Funny, how if it were a station wagon I'd be all over it, despite it being an Olds, especially with this patina but as this is, no way. Although I wouldn't mind kicking it's tires and stabbing the gas as hard as I could to see if the "350 Rocket" still had it or not.
Us car people are a fickle lot. I don't even bother trying to explain to my wife anymore what I see in one old car and don't see in another. Although, this car's invisibility to me helps me understand what folks who don't "get-cars" don't see in them either. My wife, bless her heart, does know me well enough that I believe two-door cars are good, convertibles are over-rated, five-door cars, as in stations wagons, are good too. Four-door cars are not good and should be drained of fluids and used as barrier reefs if not crushed and reborn.
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It's not all bad, though. This '71 is a real time-machine that takes me right back to high school in the early '80's when I was shopping for my first car. I would have killed to have a V-8 powered sled like this in high school even if it had four-doors. Back then a finish-less, rusty, ten or eleven year old mid-size GM sedan would probably go for between a thousand and fifteen hundred bucks. I still wouldn't touch this now for that amount but it is interesting see something like this going for as much as it is. Is $4,000 really the present day $1,000?
I haven't come across too many old cars in the flesh worth blogging about since the pandemic began. Seems owners of the old stuff have kept their cars quarantined as well. Most of what I have blogged about over the last six to eight months have been special interest projects of my own or inspiration from my online cheap-car searches. Imagine my delight this past Sunday when I literally stumbled across this big old Ford behind a repair shop near my home here in Cleveland, Ohio that I was dropping off a jug of used gear oil behind. It's a 1971 Ford LTD Brougham and there's nothing like something you find yourself.
In my very humble opinion, there aren't too many Ford's manufactured between 1949 and 1972 that I think can go bumper-to-bumper with most anything from General Motors. Ford's 1969 LTD was one of those rare exceptions and the update they did to them for 1971 made them even better looking. Ford screwed the whole thing up come 1973 but from 1969-1972, especially in 1971 and 1972, the big Ford was fab. Oh, and for the record, I'm referring to the coupes. The four door sedans, especially the pillared sedans, I have no use for. Wagons are perfectly fine. And at the risk of sacrilege, I think I might like these better than a 1971 or 1972 Chevrolet Impala Coupe. I Might. I know all too well that being as loyal as I am, given a choice between them, I'll always go GM.
The most distinctive styling change on the '71's from the 1969 and '70 LTD was on the front end. Similar to what Pontiac had been doing on their full-size models going back to 1967, is it me or is this not an update of what the Edsel would have evolved into had Ford not pulled the plug on it? We also have to keep in mind that for a brief moment Pontiac's honcho, Bunkie Knudsen, was in charge of Ford and he was a big fan of the open mouth grill. Some referred to it as the "Bunkie Beak" as he rubber stamped it to must lesser success on the 1970 - 1972 Ford Thunderbird. Somehow it worked beautifully on, of all things, Ford's 1971 and 1972 full size cadre.
Like I pointed out in my blog about that small town '69 LTD not long ago, what I think I like about these big Ford's is that they look like they could be GM designs. The Chevrolet-like Rally Rims helping to add some GM mystique to the Big Oval design. They sure look like GM Rally's you'd find on various Chevrolet's and Pontiac's but they almost can't be. I swear I can recall as kid seeing Sears selling various wheel knock-offs from The Big Three right out of their catalog.
I have mixed feelings about stuff like this - sometimes it works but most often times it doesn't. I'm not such a purist that I think they look out of place just because they're a GM inspired wheel on a Ford, I happen to think they don't look half bad. However, knowing what I know, I can't look past them. My wife was with me when I saw this car and I asked for her opinion on the matter and she gave me the blank stare down that she gives me when she could care less about what it is I'm asking her.
This big brute is far from perfect. Nefarious dents here and there, rust bubbles under the vinyl roof. I neglected to photograph the interior - the seats are in good shape but the dash is all ripped out. Perhaps that's why it's back here. A side project after hours for one of the mechanics at the shop.
What? No rudimentary after market dual exhaust? And who knows what lurks under the massive hood. If it's the stock motor it's either a 351 or 400 cubic inch, "two-barrel" V-8. A 429 V-8 was optional...how fun would that be in this? I thought of opening the hood but this is a new repair facility and no doubt there's surveillance cameras all over the place. I'm sure they got my license plate - not that they'd come after me for dropping off a jug of poison for them to dispose of but anything more than simple fawning over a car like this would be circumspect to trespassing. I did open the passenger side door and got a good whiff of that to-die-for old car smell. That would be that aroma of gas, rubber, plastic and who knows what else. If I trespassed then, your honor, I'm guilty as charged.
This is a dealer sticker from a long defunct Ford dealership in southern Ohio east of Cincinnati on the Ohio - Kentucky border. I've always found these things obnoxious - ok, I buy the car from you and then I have to drive it around as a rolling advertisement for you? So many dealers did this back then and many of them going to so far to rivet a chrome dealer emblem on rather than an impossible to remove sticker. If you're not familiar with the geography of the great state of Ohio, Cincinnati is in the southwest corner of the state and Cleveland is in the western part of what is referred to as "northeast Ohio". The fact this car originally hails from "down there" might be why it's in reasonably rust free condition. Well, save for the bubbles under the vinyl top. They don't get a but a smidgen of the awful winter weather we get up here and that means a whole lot less metal eating rock salt on the roads.
Well, as far as "old car season" goes, we're just about at the end of it up here. Not that it's been much of one this year with the pandemic and all. That's why it was extra special to see something like this this past weekend. My own personal one car car show and I loved it. They say this damn thing will end one day. That one day can't come soon enough for a whole bunch of reasons.
